


Breakups & Blanket Forts

by serikyl



Series: Everything Is Beautiful And Only Some Things Hurt [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Big Brother Diego Hargreeves, Bullying, Canon Gay Character, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Good Sibling Diego Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:33:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23935378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serikyl/pseuds/serikyl
Summary: Klaus deals with a breakup, but his brothers are there for him.Diego gets in a fight.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves/Original Male Character(s)
Series: Everything Is Beautiful And Only Some Things Hurt [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661989
Comments: 20
Kudos: 105





	Breakups & Blanket Forts

**Author's Note:**

> Klaus deals with a breakup, but his brothers are there for him.
> 
> Diego gets in a fight.
> 
> Kid Ages:  
> Luther- 17  
> Diego- 16  
> Allison- 15  
> Klaus- 14  
> Five- 13  
> Ben- 12  
> Vanya- 11

Your name is Diego Hargreeves, you are sixteen years old, it's a Tuesday afternoon and you’re playing darts against yourself. Not literally against yourself, but you’ve assigned points to various stickers covering the dartboard pinned to your bedroom wall and are playing against your highest score. Currently, you’re losing spectacularly. Sighing, you walk over to the wall and start prying one of the many darts out of the plaster. It leaves a pretty decent knick in it, but thankfully nothing too noticeable. Gramps said if he saw one more hole in this wall he was going to have you fix it yourself to “teach you some responsibility”. Three months have come and gone since that idle threat, more holes have appeared, yet no punishment has been incurred so you figure you’re in the clear. Yanking the last dart from the board, you line yourself up at the duct tape line you stuck to the floor. 

“Diego Hargreeves, Champion Dartsman lines up the shot. He takes aim aaaaaaand!” You narrate to an imaginary audience. Taking a breath you cock your arm back. Just as you let the dart free, your door swings open, startling you and the dart flies wildly off to the side, sticking itself in the moulding. Standing in the doorway to your room is your twelve year old little brother Ben. 

“Ben! Get out of my room! You know you’re supposed to knock!” You shout, annoyed.

“Sorry, next time. Something’s wrong with Klaus.” He says hurriedly, the worry on his face is evident.

“Like… fell down the stairs and broke his jaw wrong or is outside talking to the neighbor’s mailbox wrong?” Both of these things have happened in the past few years and both fell under “Something’s wrong with Klaus.”

“More like, he’s holed up in the fort and when I tried to go inside he told me to fuck off wrong. It… kind of looked like he’d been crying.” 

In the fort crying?

“Okay that's weird let’s go see what’s wrong.” 

You put your darts away in their little felt cup, then the two of you head upstairs to the fort.

The fort is a blanket fort that Klaus, Ben, and you constructed in one of the spare bedrooms when you were about nine. Technically, nobody is supposed to use the spare rooms “in case there's guests'' but there are like forty of those things. Gramps won’t miss one room. Besides, it’s been years and you honestly don’t think he’s noticed yet. If he has, he clearly doesn’t care enough to make you guys dismantle it. Not that you would without an argument, the fort is fucking cool and it took forever to build. Over the years it’s grown from it’s small corner, to taking up nearly half the room. The three of you had had to expand again when Klaus hit that growth spurt last year, to make room for his skinny limbs. Not that Ben or you have gotten any smaller, but Klaus is downright gangly. It’s not long til you’ve reached the door of the room with the fort in it. The door is shut, not unusual as it keeps it from getting discovered by your grandpa. Swivelling your head, you listen for the slow thump of his cane before slipping inside. Ben slides in after you, shutting the door behind him.

He motions to the far end of the fort, silently indicating to you where Klaus is. You stick your head in the entrance nearest the spot Ben pointed out and sure enough, Klaus is laying on his back inside. His shitty ipod is sitting on his stomach, and Lamb is tucked under one of his arms. Yikes, whatever's going on has gotta be  _ bad _ if Lamb is making an appearance. The stuffed animal practically lives in his closet nowadays. You can faintly hear the tinny note of a frankly sad sounding song playing through his headphones, and the star projector that he’d taken from Allison’s room forever ago is turned on, painting the blanket ceiling of the fort with moving bright purple stars. One of them catches his face, and his eyes look puffy and rimmed with red meaning he’s either high (Not that unusual these days) or has been crying. Or possibly both. The whole scene looks like the most depressing rave ever. You back out of the blanket fort before he sees you and motion Ben to follow you back out into the hallway.

“See what I mean? Something’s up with him.” Ben says, pointing back towards the room.

“Okay, you’re right. Something is clearly wrong with our brother. Plan  _ Cheer Up Klaus _ is a go, you get more blankets, I’ll cover snacks and drinks and stuff. Go!”

Ben nods and the two of you split off to opposite ends of the mansion, socked feet padding against the hardwood to raid the hall closet for even more pillows and blankets than what is already in the fort.

You make your way downstairs to the kitchen for some snacks and to put on a pot of Klaus’ favorite tea. Honestly, you only have the vaguest idea of how to make tea but you know the right flavor so you’re sure you’ll figure it out. Normally, you’d ask Mom how but she’ll want to know why you’re making tea and you’ll have to explain that Klaus is crying about something and he clearly doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s upset yet. So you’re winging it. Having reached the kitchen, you drag a chair over to the cabinet to grab the kettle off of the top shelf. Klaus won’t drink the instant stuff. He says it “tastes fake”. For a kid you’ve watched eat a waffle off of the floor, he sure is a priss about his tea. Filling the kettle with water, you turn on the stove to let it heat up. Then you turn to grab the tea bags from their spot in the cupboard. Klaus has been experimenting with a few different flavors this week, but if you remember correctly his favorite so far has been something called “Juniper Joy”. He’s told you it tastes like strawberries, not that you’d know because as a general rule, you won’t touch the stuff.

As the water heats up on the stove, you move about the kitchen grabbing a few snacks that you know Klaus enjoys. Namely, the bag of Veggie Straws and a tupperware container of the cookies mom baked yesterday for the school bake sale. There were some leftovers and a couple rejects that while perfectly good, didn’t make the cut. They’re snickerdoodles decorated with little faces. It’s as you’re grabbing those that the kettle starts boiling over and you have to grab it so it doesn’t explode everywhere on you. In this process, you manage to burn your hand badly enough to leave a small mark. 

One Dora The Explorer band aid (Seriously? Why do you guys even have these things? Vanya’s like eleven), a lot of swearing and one game of snack jenga later you’ve got the tea and snacks ready for Klaus. Carefully, so as not to spill the tea you’ve got balanced on top of the cookie tupperware you make your way up the two and a half flights of stairs to the fort.

You and Ben both arrive at roughly the same time, a seemingly sentient ball of blankets and pillows makes it’s way down the hallway towards you. The only sign that Ben is hidden beneath the pile is a pair of feet that stick out of the bottom of it.

Careful to not spill the tea everywhere, you elbow the door open, and step inside. Ben follows and immediately drops the blankets and pillows obscuring his form on the floor, then turns back to shut the door. You scoot through the fort entrance nearest Klaus, while Ben goes around to the bigger entrance to bring in the blankets. 

Predictably, Klaus is right where you left him gazing up at the ceiling. You get inside and poke him in the leg with your foot, he takes out a single earbud.

“Thought I told you to go away.” He sniffs, some of his syllables are a bit glubby and soft. 

“Wrong brother dingus and I come bearing gifts.” You say as he finally turns to look at you.

“I’m here too.” Ben chimes in, once again muffled by blankets.

“Well thanks, but. Please… just go away...” He pleads morosely, sitting up, headphones now abandoned on the floor.

“C’mon man, what’s going on? You usually hate sitting all alone.” 

At this, Klaus’ bottom lip starts trembling as he bursts into tears that start pouring down his cheeks. Well shit, your goal here was not to make your little brother cry harder. Maybe you shouldn’t have pushed the subject so much.

“Hey, hey. Don’t cry, c’mere.” He continues to cry as you move closer towards him and gently pull him into your arms. His response is to press his face into your shoulder, still full-force waterworks. Ben creeps nearer, shuffling around you both til he’s on the other side of Klaus. He wraps all of you in one of the blankets, and you get Lamb, placing him in Klaus’ arms. The three of you sit like that for awhile, you rubbing Klaus’ arm while Ben rubs a thumb against his ankle. It takes a bit, but eventually he’s cried himself out, just sitting there snivelling a bit, shaky sobs finding their way out every so often. You figure now is probably the best time to give him the tea, and you motion to Ben to grab it who hands it to Klaus. It’s most likely gone ice cold by now, but Klaus still shakily takes it, sipping at it as his sobs subside. He extricates himself from the two of you, scooting back up against the wall, taking the blanket with him. Thankfully, Ben brought enough blankets for all of you.

“I-I’m. I’m sorry for pushing so much. We we-were worried.” You say, kicking your stammer in the shin.  _ Picture the words in your mind.  _ Mom’s words come back to you. It’s kind of frustrating. Your little brother needs you and now is not the time for you to be getting all tongue-tied.

“It’s okay Di. I know you guys meant well.” He sips his tea again, and pulls a face.

“Ugh. This tea is terrible. What’d you do to it?” He half laughs, half sobs.

Klaus may be crying, but at least you got him to laugh a bit. That's definitely a step in the right direction.

“Hey, I slaved over a hot kettle to make that tea.”

He eyes the stupid brightly colored cartoon monkey band aid adorning your hand.

“Well I don’t doubt that.” He sniffles, foregoing your apparently terribly brewed tea in exchange for idly playing with Lamb in his lap.

You all lapse into a not quite comfortable silence when Klaus suddenly pipes up again.

“Chad broke up with me this morning.” Tears well up in his eyes again at this declaration. Not the giant heaving sobs of before, but tears keep slipping their way down his cheeks.

“He… He said it was all a big joke. Said that even if he did like guys…” He sucks in a breath, burying his face in his knees a little. “...Why would he ever like a crazy, freak boy like, like me?” Klaus finishes, voice now small and fragile.

When Klaus was seven years old, he was diagnosed with Acute Early Onset Paranoid Schizophrenia. He doesn’t like to talk about it much, preferring to laugh it off instead, but he has good days and bad days, good months and bad months. The therapy and his medication generally keep things under control, but about two weeks ago Klaus had had an especially bad day. You don’t know much about the incident, but the rumor mill works harder and faster for less. From what you’ve heard, though you’ve tried not to listen out of respect for your little brother is that “some freshman walked out of class and was found freaking out in the stairwell”. From there the rumor had only grown, some saying that it’d been caused by a bad acid trip, others saying that he punched a teacher. Only a few had put Klaus’ name to the story, probably some of the jerks that had had class with him. What you know for sure is true is that two weeks ago, Klaus had a bad episode while at school and Mom was called to pick him up early. You hadn’t thought much of it, they’d both said he wasn’t feeling well so he got picked up early. Happens from time to time, it hadn’t even occurred to you until you heard people talking about it what might have actually happened.

Your fist clenches. How dare those assholes make your little brother cry like this. You’d all known that there’d be an uptick in bullies after such a bad episode, you’re not stupid. But for those kids to be so cruel, to take it this far? This type of thing never happened back when Klaus was in the combination elementary/middle school that you had all gone to. All the kids in his class had been used to him. There’d been teasing, sure, but never outright malicious cruelty like this.

Suddenly, Ben launches himself at Klaus, who while surprised, catches him into a hug.

“You’re not a freak!” he shouts, words muffled by Klaus’ shirt. “You aren’t! You’re the best big brother in the whole world.”

At this, Klaus smiles a bit squeezing Ben to him.

“Hey, you have like four older brothers you know!” You tease, tone laden with fake offense.

“Yeah. I know.” Ben replies, only slightly breaking his face away from the hug to make direct eye contact with you.

You’re both sticking your tongues out at each other when Klaus throws an arm your way. All three of you fall into the hug and end up laying there for a bit, watching the purple stars whirl across the blanket ceiling.

“Thanks guys.” Klaus says, rubbing what's left of the tears from his eyes.

The rest of the night is pretty relaxed, you and Ben sneak back out of the fort room to get your TV and the DVD player from your bedroom. It took you  _ months  _ to save up enough to get them. Gramps had told you the only way you were getting a TV in your room was if you bought it yourself, so you did. By far, it’s been one of your best purchases as it lets you guys have impromptu movie nights like this. While you set up the TV, you send Ben to get the popcorn and Klaus to get the copy of Mamma Mia from his room.

It’s not really your type of movie, you like action movies better and it’s some kind of musical, but it’s Klaus’ favorite when he’s feeling down so you and Ben are happy to watch it with him.

Ben does a near perfect rendition of  _ Dancing Queen _ , lip syncing word for word along with the movie, that has you and Klaus absolutely howling with laughter. 

By the time the three of you head to bed, it’s much later than any of you are supposed to stay up but when Klaus leaves the room, he looks less depressed than he was when you crashed his sad little party so mission accomplished.

The three of you split off in separate directions, and everything is fine. At least, it is until the next afternoon.

  
  


Your name is still Diego Hargreeves. It’s the next afternoon between fourth and fifth period, and you’re walking to your Algebra class with your best friend Eudora Patch when out of the corner of your eye you spot him. He’s a tall kid with auburn curls, and maybe it’s the hair that draws your eye but really you hear him before you see him. He’s laughing raucously with those creepy twins. What’re their names? Gerald and Leonard? Something like that, nobody really likes either of them. Your mind places the tall one instantly as the boy Klaus told you about last night.

“You should’ve seen the look on his face!” Chad shouts uproariously. He sticks out his lip, quivering it a bit, voice taking on a high pitched whine.

“You’re breaking up with me? Wahhhh!” He drops the shitty imitation foregoing the whine to switch back to his regular tone.

“God, can you believe that loser ever thought I’d be into him? Even if I were into guys, who’d ever want to go out with a crazy kid who talks to himself?”

The twerps practically bust a gut laughing at this, like they’ve just heard the best joke in the world. You’re doubtful that either of them even have the capacity to understand comedy.

You don’t realize you’ve stopped walking until Eudora tugs at your sleeve questioningly. Your jaw is clenched so tightly you can’t speak, all you can see as you look at this kid and his dick friends is red.

Suddenly, you’re on him. Fists flying, you hit him again and again and again. You think Eudora shouts for you to stop, at first, but her cries switch to a “Hit him!” quickly enough. At this Chad’s friends join in. You knock one of them away (Harold? you think?) and he goes down, his twin quickly following suit (Leonard maybe? Who cares???), leaving you more room to focus on your real target. How dare this fucker treat your brother this way? Your kind little brother who never did anything to anybody, who got his heart broken because this shithead decided it’d be a funny joke to toy with his feelings. 

“Don’t. Mess. With. My. Brother. Ever. Again!” Each word you emphasize by hitting him. You cock your arm back again for another punch when a doughy, white hand stops you. Coach Martin grabs you from behind, pulling you off of Chad and effectively restraining you. You struggle, but it’s useless. He’s a large man that seems round but is really a solid wall of muscle, one of the few gym teachers at this school that’s actually worth his salt. One of the librarians, Miss Douglas, has Chad in her grasp.

In the middle of where the fray once stood, stands a short, imposing woman with deep brown skin and dark curls pulled taut into a bun on top of her head. You’ve been called down to her office enough times that you recognize her immediately. The principal. Mrs Caldwell. Fuck.

“All of you! Back to class, yes you too Miss Patch. The four of you, in my office. Now!” She growls, giving each of you a death glare. If looks could kill, you’d be nothing but ashes.

  
  
  
  


Your name is Grace Hargreeves, and you are hard at work at your desk when your phone starts vibrating. After a quick look around to make sure none of your superiors are watching, you hazard a glance at the lit up screen.

**CALLER ID: WESTCHESTER ACADEMY**

You suck in a breath. It’s 1:20 pm and the high school is calling you. That’s almost never a good thing. Well, except for that time Five’s teacher called you about upping the grade level of his classwork, but that was a one time thing. Rarely is it your math prodigy that the school contacts you about, and as of late, even with him it’s been seldom that it’s for anything good. Quickly, you excuse yourself, grabbing your purse and hurrying out to the hall.  _ Please let it be something good, please let it be something good, please don’t let anything be on fire this time, and if something is please don’t let it be the fault of one of your children _ . You flip open the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi, this is Westchester Academy, is this Miss Hargreeves?” A nasally voice on the other end of the line asks.

“Speaking.”

“Miss Hargreeves, there’s been a fight involving one of your children. Mmmm….” There’s a pause where you imagine she’s looking down a list of your high school age children. “Diego Hargreeves? We need you to come down right away.”

“Diego? A fight? What happened?” You ask.

“I’m afraid we can’t disclose that information over the telephone, but we need you to come down here.”

“Alright, I’ll get someone to cover for me, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

It takes you a full ten minutes of asking around and costs you a tray of your homemade triple fudge chocolate chip cookies for the office, but you’re able to get Pauline to cover for you while you drive down to the high school to get this thing sorted. Somehow you manage to hit three redlights on the way there, and get stuck at an intersection while a large crowd of painfully slow people cross. Sometimes you can’t stand tourists.

You walk into the front office thirty minutes after the call rather than the twenty you’d originally stated. Considering how often you’re here and how often your children are in trouble, it’s a really good look. At least you weren’t at Starbucks this time.

When you walk into the principal’s office front waiting area the first thing you see is Diego sitting in one of the chairs, scowling. His uniform is askew, but otherwise he doesn’t look like he’s hurt, he’s shooting daggers at the boy across the room. When he sees you come in your son freezes, then blanches slightly, looking away. You direct your gaze to the boy he was glaring at. Said boy is holding an ice pack to his jaw, his lip is split, and there’s a bruise forming near his right eye that will undoubtedly be a nasty black eye come morning. There are two other boys identical to each other sitting in the office who sport lesser facial injuries. Your mind quickly begins to piece together what happened. 

_ “Diego Michael Hargreeves! What in the world-“ _

  
  


Your name is Diego Hargreeves and your mother has just walked into the front office outside of the principal’s office. 

_ “Diego Michael Hargreeves! What in the world-“  _ Your mom whisper-shouts. Before you can even open your mouth to respond, the principal opens the door to her office. Whether you’ve been saved or screwed by the bell remains to be seen. Mom’s angry face twists into a pleasant smile. Yeah you’re fucked.

“Ms Caldwell. Hi, nice to see you again.” Your mother sheepishly greets the principal.

“Miss Hargreeves. Wish I could say the same.” Caldwell responds coolly. “Step into my office and take a seat, we have some things to discuss.”

Mom enters first, you follow along, taking your usual seat on the left in front of her desk while mom takes the right. You’ve been in this office often enough in your high school career that this is the standard procedure.

“Now. Mr Hargreeves.” Caldwell picks up the incident report from her desk. “Mr Hartley informed me during his conduct meeting that you attacked him out of nowhere. While you may have caused trouble in the past, this seems rather out of character. Misters Jenkins and Jenkins have corroborated Mr Hartley’s story, but given their history I am more inclined to allow you to tell your side of the story before I make any hard decisions about punishments.”

“He deserved it, he-“ You sigh and stop short, wind knocked out of your sails. “He just. He has a really punchable face.”

You can’t tell either of them what he did to Klaus. There’s no way you can betray his trust like that and force him out of the closet before he’s ready. To your knowledge, he’s only out to you and Ben,  _ maybe  _ to Allison but you don’t know for sure. He definitely hasn’t told your brother Luther yet. Last week, Luther had made a joke about “Klaus’ future wife” and the poor kid had nearly choked on his cereal. Though he hadn’t corrected him, just looked a little uncomfortable until the subject had changed. You can’t tell your mom and the principal of the school that your little brother is gay. That’s not yours to tell, and you refuse to be the asshole that takes that moment from him.

“I see. Anything else?” The principal asks. You can feel mom’s eyes on you from here.

“No. Nothing else ma’am.” 

“Alright. Given your statement, your punishment will be three days of out of school suspension. Go collect the things you’ll need for tonight’s homework from your locker, we’ll have to send your missed work home with one of your siblings. Dismissed.” Caldwell finishes.

As the two of you walk out of the office, mom stops you with a gentle but firm squeeze to the shoulder. Off to the side, still sitting in his chair is Chad.

“I think you owe someone an apology.” Mom prompts you, turning you slightly towards him.

Chadley’s face splits open into a sadistic, shit eating grin. You can’t apologize to this dick, you can’t, you  _ won’t _ . For a moment you consider faking it to make mom happy but the words stick in your throat, the very idea makes you feel physically sick.

“I’m. I am. Fuck. I’m n-not apologizing to him.” Shit. Well that could’ve come out better, but you think you got your point across. Still, you can feel the tips of your ears burning. Chad is smirking at you now, and all you want in the world right now is to go for round two and wipe that smug look off of his face. You gently pull your shoulder out of your mom’s grip.

“I’m gonna go collect my stuff, I’ll be waiting in the car.”

It doesn’t take long to gather up your stuff from your locker, but mom still beats you to the car. You see her sitting in the front seat, it doesn’t look like she’s noticed you exiting the building yet, unsurprising since you took the weird side door closest to your locker. From what you can tell from here, it looks like she might be listening to that radio show she likes, the talk show about old paintings. Great. Maybe it’ll make her less pissed about your three day long suspension. You end up having to knock to get her to unlock the doors. She is not less pissed. You put your bag in the trunk, she flicks the radio off in between you climbing into the passenger side of the van and you try very hard to spend the rest of the ride not making eye contact by staring out the car window. You fail, as after about less than two minutes of tense silence, mom pipes up. 

“So. Are we gonna talk about what happened today?” She asks. 

“Uhhh… No….?” You try.

“Try again.” There’s a warning in her voice.

“Yes…?”

“That’s more like it. Now what happened today?”

You shrug a shoulder and go back to looking out the window, there really isn’t much to look at except buildings and tourists.

“I dunno, felt like punching him.” You finally respond. It’s a weak excuse and you both know it, but you refuse to give in.

“Diego… I thought I raised you better than to solve problems with your fists.”

“Yeah well. Sometimes people need to get punched.”

“And why did that boy need to get punched?”

“......... He just did.”

She sighs, scrutinizing you out of the corner of your eye. Maybe you’ll somehow escape grounding this time?

“I’m not mad, but I am very disappointed in you.”

Well fuck. Guess you spoke too soon, why’d she have to go there, that's much worse than her being mad.

“Also you’re grounded for three weeks.” She finishes, eyes firmly affixed back on the road.

“Three weeks? But Mom! Eudora and I were supposed to go see the new Spiderman movie this weekend!”

“You should have thought about that before deciding to get into a fist fight with three other kids.” She responds, voice firm.

Groaning, you slide down into a dramatic slouch in your seat. 

“Groan all you like Diego, I’m not budging on this one.” 

It’s gonna be a long three weeks.

It’s later that night and you’re staring at the ceiling of your room when there’s a knock at your door. Currently, none of your siblings are allowed to be visiting you and mom checked in after dinner hours ago so it’s less than likely to be her. Slipping off the bed you walk over to the door and open it, praying that it doesn’t squeak on the way. Luckily, it doesn’t and Klaus slides his way inside.

“Klaus?” you ask him quietly.

“Who else?” He retorts, as you both walk deeper into the room.

“You know we have five other siblings right?” 

“Sigh. Well, it’s obviously none of them, and none of them snuck you this!” He thrusts a plate you somehow failed to notice into your hands. On it is a slice of the cherry pie Mom made for desert. You didn’t get any earlier, on account of gramps hearing about what happened today and deciding that you would be sent to your room without dessert after dinner.

Immediately, you grab the fork and dive in. Mom’s cherry pie is amazing, and she only makes it once in awhile, as a treat, so missing out on it is the worst. Grabbing the fork you take a seat at your desk chair, Klaus plops himself over on your bean bag chair criss crossing his legs in front of him. 

“So what’s this for?” You ask through a mouthful of cherry pie.

“I saw Chadley today.” Klaus responds.

“Oh. Uhh… you did?”

“Thanks Di.” He says with a small smile.

“Hey, you know I’d do it again any day.” You reply, scraping the last bit of cherry goo off of the plate. The two of you sit for a bit, happy in the companionable silence, until Klaus speaks up.

“Uhhh…. Diego?” 

“Yeah?” You ask, not looking up from your plate, still trying to scrape up the last of the filling.

“I think I’m stuck.” 

That has you looking up. Klaus has somehow managed to fall back a bit, leading his skinny butt to get sucked into the beanbag. You’ve been stuck in that thing enough times to know that unless he wants to fling himself out of the chair onto the floor he’s not gonna be able to get out without help. 

“Hang on, I’m coming.” Pushing your plate aside, you get up from your spot at your desk and grab hold of Klaus’ outstretched arm. You pull him up, causing him to spring out of the chair. Had you not caught him by the shoulders, Klaus would almost definitely have face planted on your bedroom floor. Poor kid has been such a klutz since his last growth spurt, still unused to his suddenly long legs. A startled squeak escapes him as you just barely manage to stop his pitch forward.

“Don’t worry, I gotcha.” You say, messing up his already wild curls.

“Thank you… and thanks again. For the other night too.” With that, Klaus wraps his arms around you in a quick hug, grabs the now empty plate, and leaves. Yeah, you don’t regret fighting those jerks at all.

  
  


Two months later, Klaus decides to come out. To the whole family this time, not just quietly to you or to Ben while hanging out in the fort. He’s already told mom he has something he’d like to say at dinnertime. He’s been pacing back and forth frantically across the floor of Ben’s room for the last hour or so, having dragged you in here so he’d have multiple people to panic to.

“Klaus, it’s gonna be alright.” You attempt to reassure him for the sixth time.

“But what if it isn’t?” He shoots back, nervously picking at his already chipped black nail polish. 

“It will be.” Ben replies. 

“But how do you guys  _ know _ ?”

“Because we all love you? And nothing could change that?” You try. 

“But. But what if they don’t treat me the same?” Back, forth, back, forth he goes.

“Did either of us treat you any different when you came out to us?” Ben asks.

“Well no bu- _ Argh would you shut up already! _ “ Klaus breaks off from his pacing to shoot a look of pure vitriol at an empty corner of the room. He runs a pair of frustrated hands through his hair. Alright, you probably need to try harder to derail Klaus’ freakout train before he works himself into more of a panic.

“Klaus!” You start firmly, walking over and taking him by the shoulders. 

He makes eye contact with you, eyes breaking away every so often to glare at the corner.

“Look at me man, deep breaths okay?” 

Holding eye contact with you, he tries his best to match your breathing, eventually evening it out to a more normal rate.

He sighs deeply. “I’m just… I’m scared y’know?”

Ben gets closer and the two of you scoop Klaus between you into a hug.

“Yeah, we know. It’s probably really scary and feels big, but you’ll be glad you did it in the end though right?”

“Yeah.” He agrees, voice muffled against your chest. 

“And Ben and I will be here for you afterwards right?” 

“Yeah.”

“And it’s all gonna be okay? Right?”

“Yeah.” 

Distantly, you hear mom yell for you all to come to dinner. Minutes later, grandpa repeats her over the old speaker system.

“You got this kiddo.” You tell him one last time, ruffling his hair on the way out. He squawks a bit at this and starts trying to fix his hair, but he does shoot you and Ben a small smile before the three of you reach the dining room.

The nine of you take your seats, everyone's passing their favorite seasonings or condiments around for their chicken, when Mom asks you all to quiet down for a minute. 

“Alright everyone, wait for a minute. Klaus told me earlier he has something to say.” Mom smiles, nodding to Klaus. Your family looks at him curiously. Klaus pales, face going ghost white. He subtly grabs your hand under the table, squeezing it like he’ll die if he let’s go. There is a surprising amount of strength in his grasp for such a scrawny kid. Ow. You squeeze back to the best of your ability, and Klaus takes a deep breath.

“I’m… I’m gay.” He finally blurts out. His hand goes limp in yours as the wired tension seems to rapidly drain from his body.

“Thank you for sharing that with us Klaus, we all love you. Alright, now let’s eat.” Mom says. Everyone goes back to their food, and you get your now slightly blue hand back. Subtly, you gauge everyone else’s reactions to Klaus’ news. 

Allison is smiling encouragingly at Klaus, Vanya too gives him one of her rare, small, shy smiles. You catch Five grumbling and slipping Ben a twenty under the table. Luther looks confusedly at his potatoes, but something tells you his search history is about to be filled with things like “How To Talk To Your Gay Brother” “How To Support Someone Who Just Came Out” “Supporting Gay Family Members For Dummies”. Gramps looks pretty indifferent to the news, which is expected. 

Klaus smiles weakly over at you, and then starts digging into his chicken. 

It seems like everything is gonna be okay, just like you’d promised.

  
  


  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaand second fic is done! Once again, thank you to all the friends both internet and irl who've helped me on the way, I couldn't have gotten this complete without you! Not sure when fic number three will be out, but I will be starting it soon. Til then I really hope you all enjoy part two of Everything Is Beautiful And Nothing Hurts. Feel free to yell in the comments, OR with me on Tumblr @Serikyl.


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